Kill Again

by Neal Baer

  “We’re in the middle of something,” Nick said, pretending to be offended by her presence. They both noticed Palmer avoiding her gaze.

  “What’s she doing here?” he said to Nick.

  “I don’t know,” Nick answered. “She’s not supposed to be.”

  Palmer still wouldn’t acknowledge her.

  “Who the hell is she?” he asked Nick.

  “A shrink,” said Nick, rolling his eyes in mock disgust.

  “I’m a psychiatrist,” said Claire, keeping her voice taut, suspecting Palmer didn’t like women in positions of authority. “My name is Doctor Claire Waters. And if you have questions about me, then you can ask me, not Detective Lawler.”

  “Fine, Doctor,” Palmer said with true contempt. “Why are you here?”

  “Do you carry a lot of shame around with you, Mr. Palmer?”

  “About what? And you didn’t answer my question.”

  “Your wife’s murder,” said Claire. “And I’m the one who’ll ask the questions. . . .”

  Palmer’s eyes turned angry. “You’ve been eavesdropping on us?” he interjected.

  “Every word.”

  “You were outside my apartment with a gun!” Palmer exclaimed.

  “That’s not exactly true, is it?” Claire shot back. “And I want an answer to my question. Now, please.”

  Palmer glared at her. “Why would I be ashamed about the death of my wife?” he demanded.

  “Because you didn’t want anyone to know what you did to her.”

  Their eyes met—and that’s when Claire saw it. That one fraction of a second, the recognition of knowing.

  “You think I murdered her?” he asked with disbelief.

  “Her bones were boiled. So all the meat would fall clean off them. Just like making chicken soup,” Claire said.

  “But the Costa Rican police cleared me!” Palmer exclaimed.

  “Yes, they told us they questioned you. For five hours. That you were forthcoming, scared to death, and they concluded you weren’t a suspect.”

  “Then why would you bring it up?” Palmer roared.

  “Because you’re a fascinating man, Mr. Palmer,” Claire said as she leaned against the wall just feet away from him. “I read a lot about you since we met on the street last night. You know what I found most interesting?”

  “I don’t really care but I’m sure you’re going to tell me.”

  “That so many years after you left the kitchen and began running the hotel, you’d still go every day to the farmers’ markets in Santa Cruz or Tamarindo.”

  “I took a lot of pride in the food we served, and my talent in picking it,” Palmer said. “I loved beginning my day that way. That this fascinates you makes me question your credentials.”

  He sounded off kilter, though, finishing his speech while Claire pulled a chair as close to him as she dared, turned it around, and sat straddling it, her arms crossed atop the back.

  “Let me tell you why you so intrigue me,” Claire said. “Because between 1978 and 2010, the bones of twenty-three women were found in various spots along the east and west coasts of Costa Rica. All of them were murdered, but the police don’t know how or have an official cause of death for any of them—because the killer dismembered them and boiled their bones so the meat would slide right off. Don’t you find that interesting?”

  “Why?” Palmer spat out the word. “Because my wife was murdered the same way?”

  “No. I think you’re the killer because, except for your wife, all of those young women were last seen at either the Santa Cruz or Tamarindo farmers’ markets. The same two you visited every day for the thirty-two years you lived in Costa Rica.”

  Palmer stared straight ahead, saying nothing.

  “That was your hunting ground,” Claire said. “Every serial killer has one. And you know how I know it’s you? Because in that whole story you told Detective Lawler about your wife, Martha, you never once mentioned that you loved her. If you ever did.”

  “Of course I loved her!” exclaimed Palmer like the bad actor he was. “And why are we talking about crimes that happened in Costa Rica? You have no authority there.”

  “But we do in New York City,” Nick said, opening the folder and sliding a photo across the table. “Because of this guy,” he said. “Who exactly is he to you?”

  Palmer stared at the mug shot of Jonah Welch and laughed. “Nobody,” he said. “I’ve never seen him in my life.”

  “Emigrant hasta,” Claire said in his face.

  “What?” retorted Palmer, fear in his eyes for the first time.

  “You heard me.”

  “Emigrant hasta? What the hell does that mean?”

  “I think you know,” Claire said.

  “And I think you’re both crazy!” Palmer shouted.

  Claire pulled out more photos, slamming them down in front of Palmer one by one: Boom! Rosa Sanchez. Boom! Her bones. Boom! The bones from the basement of the burned-out building in Brooklyn. And finally, boom boom! The bones of the two victims from the seventies, to which she now pointed. “Until we found you, the police had no idea whose bones these are. Two victims, without names since 1977.”

  “Go to hell,” Palmer hissed, refusing to meet her gaze.

  “So we went back, did a little checking into your past,” Claire said. “You had some problems in school, didn’t you? Problems with girls. You liked to touch them. Inappropriately.”

  “You don’t know what you’re saying,” Palmer exclaimed, his hands gripped around the chair’s seat as if he were about to fall off.

  “We didn’t, for a while,” Claire said. “But we do now. We got your school records. Six incidents of fondling girls’ breasts. You slapped one of them when she wouldn’t let you. Then you started cutting school. Transit police found you riding the subways, from borough to borough, when you weren’t working at your parents’ restaurant. Did it get you mad enough to kill two of those schoolgirls who didn’t want you?”

  Palmer said nothing. He just smiled.

  “You remembered their names,” Claire continued. “Even when they moved away. But you waited. And then you went after them. Celia Donato and Camille Panza.”

  If Palmer recognized the names, he gave no indication. Claire pressed on. “The police never found their identities because they both moved to Nassau County before you killed them and dumped their bones in Brooklyn. They were never reported missing here in the city. Their parents are dead. They’ll never know after all these years that we found their daughters and their killer.”

  Palmer played with his fingers, cracking his knuckles. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Nick pointed to the photo of Rosa’s bones, then pulled out the photo of the receipt and practically papered his face with it. “What does emigrant hasta mean?” Nick demanded.

  But Palmer only stared at him. “For God’s sake, that’s not even my handwriting,” he exclaimed, pointing at the two words. “And why would I write words in two different languages that have no meaning when they’re put together? What is wrong with you people?”

  Nick glanced at Claire and could tell they were both thinking the same thing: that however disingenuous the rest of Palmer’s denials, this one was driven by pure fear and sounded real. Too real. So Nick went for it, banging his fist on the photos of the bones.

  “Thirty-five years, twenty-four murders, all done the same way in places you were when they happened. I bring even this much to a jury, they’ll see the pattern.”

  “I welcome you to try,” Palmer said, as if it were a done deal. “But I have no idea why you’re accusing me of such horrible crimes, including the murder of the wife I loved and cherished dearly. I’ve already admitted to hitting you, Detective, and told you why I did that. And yes, I’m ashamed of what I did and beg your forgiveness. But that’s all.”

  Now his eyes moved back and forth between theirs like ping-pong balls flying across a table. As if making sure they’d hear what he was about t
o say loud and clear.

  “As long as I live, I’ll never, ever confess to anything I didn’t do.”

  CHAPTER 19

  Nick stood with Claire and Wilkes in front of a video monitor, its camera focused on Palmer, sitting at the table in the interrogation room. “What are we missing here?” Nick asked, frustrated.

  “I don’t know,” grumbled Wilkes, “but the sonuvabitch is good, I’ll give him that.”

  Nick and Claire had left Palmer after he’d laid down his gauntlet, agreeing only that he’d sign the form confirming he’d been read his rights and waived them. They expected a full tongue-lashing from Wilkes for not getting a confession.

  “And so are you two,” Wilkes said, surprising both Nick and Claire. “You stuck to the script and got him convinced that compared to us he’s a shoe-in for Mensa.”

  “He chopped those women up,” Claire said. “We just have to prove it.”

  “You’ve gotta be patient, Doc,” Wilkes said. “This guy’s been doing his dirty work for four decades and hasn’t been nailed yet. I’m telling you, he knows we’ve got his number. The bastard is just gonna make us work for it.”

  “Then we’d better go back and look at the evidence again,” Nick suggested. “Maybe there’s something we’re not seeing.”

  Claire’s mind raced. “Okay, let me ask you this. All three of us saw the entire interview, from start to finish. At what point did Palmer get the most agitated?”

  “Is this a quiz, Doc?” Wilkes asked. “Or don’t you remember?”

  “I know what I think,” answered Claire. “I’m wondering whether you agree. And I don’t want to say anything that’ll influence your opinions.”

  “Emigrant hasta,” Nick said. “That stirred him up.”

  “That’s my vote,” added Wilkes.

  “Mine too,” Claire confirmed. “He denied knowing what it meant and pointed out that it wasn’t even his handwriting, something he knows we can prove.”

  “Wait,” said Nick. “He said the words were written in two different languages. One, which happens to be in Spanish. Palmer lived in Costa Rica and he speaks it fluently.”

  “Meaning what?” asked Wilkes.

  “Do you speak Spanish?” Nick asked.

  “How many years you know me, Nicky?” Wilkes asked. “Hell, I have trouble with English.”

  “Okay, so when you’re trying to communicate with someone who speaks only Spanish, how do you do it?”

  “You mean, if I can’t find a Spanish-speaking cop to translate for me?” A look of realization crept over his face. “I use the words I know and the ones I don’t know I say in English.”

  “Just like anyone else in that situation would,” Claire said.

  “So you’re saying that a guy who lived in a Spanish-speaking country for thirty-plus years wouldn’t need to write the words in two different languages,” Wilkes concluded.

  “That’s what’s not clicking for me,” said Nick.

  “Are you saying he slipped up?” Wilkes asked.

  “No,” said Nick. “I’m saying he shouldn’t have been so upset about a mistake he knows he didn’t make. Especially if he’s sure we won’t be able to match his handwriting to the writing on the receipt.”

  Wilkes was rough and gruff, but you don’t get to his position by being a moron. That didn’t stop him from feeling like one at that moment.

  “Doc,” he said, “I’m having trouble wrapping my head around this. And you’re the expert on heads, or at least what’s inside them.” He gestured to Palmer on the monitor. “What’s inside his?”

  For the first time since she’d met him, Claire felt a kinship with the inspector.

  “Don’t beat yourself up about it, because I don’t know either,” she assured him. “This is a tough one. Let’s confirm that the writing on the receipt found with Rosa Sanchez’s bones either is or isn’t Palmer’s.”

  “We’d better do it fast,” said Wilkes, checking his watch. “Clock’s running. And the bastard is right. If the only thing we can charge him with is assaulting Nicky, he’s gonna make bail. No way can we let this scumbag take a walk.”

  Ninety minutes later, the handwriting expert on call to the NYPD only confused things even more.

  “It’s inconclusive,” said Norma Rabin, a peroxide blonde whose age was estimated to be at least seventy, and whose heavy blue eye shadow reminded Nick of his own grandmother. She’d worked many times with Nick and Wilkes and had their complete trust as she pointed out similarities between the writing on the receipt and Palmer’s writing on the Miranda form. “The pressure on the paper, the way the T is crossed, the C that looks a little like a G are all consistent. But there’s a lot that isn’t too.”

  Claire excused herself, leaving Wilkes and Nick to handle Norma. In her view, “inconclusive” meant they had to consider the possibility that, in fact, Palmer did write the words on the receipt. But even if true, it still wouldn’t explain why he’d use two words in two different languages.

  On the dry-erase board in Wilkes’s office, she wrote the words. HASTA EMIGRANT. In bold letters. What did they mean?

  She started with the first word’s literal translation. In Spanish, hasta means until. Emigrant, of course, means someone who leaves one country to live in another. On the surface, Palmer was right, Claire thought. Together the words don’t make sense.

  What was going on in his mind?

  Was this a message? That he’d left another body and was about to flee the country? A sort of farewell, until next time? Hasta la vista, baby?

  Or was it something else completely?

  Messages can be in code, or they can be scrambled. Is that what this is? Some kind of sick game he’s playing on us? Is he trying to mix us up?

  She stared at the two words. And all at once, it hit her.

  Mix us up . . .

  She quickly wrote on the board in big, black-marker block letters:

  ANAGRAM

  Was it possible? Was Palmer telling them something? Claire couldn’t believe that the word anagram taken and rearranged from the letters in hasta emigrant could possibly be a coincidence. But that left six unused letters: HSTEIT. She focused on the letters and then wrote another word on the board next to ANAGRAM:

  THEIST

  She was just finishing when the door flew open and Nick entered, startling her so that she dropped the marker.

  “Yikes, Nick—”

  “Sorry I scared you,” he said. Then he saw the writing on the board. “What’s this?”

  “I unscrambled the words and made two new words out of them,” said Claire.

  He stared at the words. “Any particular reason?”

  Claire took him through her thought process.

  “Okay, I know what an anagram is,” Nick said when she was finished, “but what does theist mean?”

  “A theist is someone who believes God is the creator,” said Claire.

  “Where the word atheist came from to describe someone who doesn’t,” Nick realized. “Hard to believe Palmer—or whoever wrote it if he didn’t—believes in God or anything else that’s sacred, you know, like human life. But I can’t even guess what anagram theist means.”

  “Maybe he feels omnipotent,” suggested Claire.

  “Because he murdered all these women over three and a half decades and got away with it?”

  “And now he’s throwing it in our faces with word puzzles—”

  She stopped, wondering if she was going too far with this, looking for an explanation for the unexplainable.

  Nick sensed her doubt. “A theory is a theory is a theory,” he said. “Like I said to the kids in your class, if one doesn’t add up, let the evidence take you to another. We can check with the cops in Costa Rica to see if they found any cryptic message with the bodies down there. Meantime, come with me.”

  “Where to?” asked Claire.

  “Crime lab. With Savarese and Wilkes. We’re gonna go over the evidence, up close and personal, one more time.
Maybe there’s something one of us sees that doesn’t pop in a photo.”

  If not for the fleet of Dodge Sprinter vans parked alongside the light-brick, four-story, converted apartment building beside the Long Island Railroad tracks, you’d never know it was the police department’s state-of-the-art crime lab. Claire was surprised to see the building had no markings or signage, though the plethora of high-quality surveillance cameras on both corners of the building and the ID card reader at the door suggested more to the place than met the eye.

  Upstairs, a lab technician, Renee Eckert, a stunner in her mid-forties with red hair pulled back in a bun and prominent cheekbones without a wrinkle, laid out on a table the scant evidence from Rosa Sanchez’s murder, with labeled cards reading Staten Island Woods and Trash Can Near Yankee Stadium. On a second table sat even less evidence from the other two killings back in the seventies.

  “That’s all?” asked Wilkes. “Where’s the stuff from the Brooklyn fire?”

  “You mean that pile of ashes we’ve got three techs sifting through out at Floyd Bennett?” she asked, annoyed.

  “Point taken,” said Wilkes, chastened. “Gonna take weeks to find anything. If there’s anything left to find.”

  “Only evidence not out is the bones,” said Eckert, her thick accent betraying her Bronx roots. “Didn’t think you’d need ’em.”

  Nick examined the large pots in which Rosa’s bones were presumably boiled. “Not sure what looking at these again is gonna do for us,” he said.

  They spent half an hour poring over all that was on display, until they decided there was nothing to nail Palmer, or perhaps anyone else, as the killer.

  “Guess this was something of a wasted trip,” Wilkes said, summing up what they all felt as they waited for the elevator.

  “Still worth a shot,” said Nick, trying to make himself feel better.

  That’s when the doors opened and CSU Detective Terry Aitken emerged.

  “Hey, you guys,” he said. “Inspector,” he added, affording Wilkes the deference due his rank. “What brings you all out from the Puzzle Palace to our oasis here in sunny Jamaica?”